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Helen Prejean: Antonin Scalia's position on death penalty flouted Catholic teaching and hewed to archaic ideas on mental disability

Sister Helen Prejean, a Sister of St. Joseph, ministers to prisoners on death row. She is the author of "Dead Man Walking." The views expressed are her own.

(CNN)I'm praying for Justice Antonin Scalia, that his passage into eternity was peaceful. I respect his sincerity, even though on the subject of the death penalty, he was my nemesis.

As I was writing "The Death of Innocents," I happened to run into him in an airport, and I said teasingly that I was "taking him on" in my book. And he, personable as he was, jabbed his finger in the air and said, "And I'll be right back at ya!"

In "Innocents," I wrote about two men I believe were innocent: Joseph O'Dell and Dobie Gillis Williams, whose executions Scalia summarily authorized without an apparent qualm, acknowledging that his role on the Supreme Court made him part of the "machinery of death."

In grasping the "meaning" of state killings, I had one advantage over Scalia. I was there, close up to the anguish and terror of the condemned and their grieving mothers. Scalia, in the cerebral confines of the Court, never touched a tear-stained cheek, never stood present at the grave as families buried their loved ones killed by the state.

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One thing the justice and I did have in common, however, was this: he stumped around the country to persuade citizens of the rightness of his "originalist" approach to the Constitution; I stumped around the country (still do) to persuade citizens to abolish the death penalty, laying out my arguments through stories of personal experience, beliefs of my Catholic faith and logical, fact-infused arguments, including Constitutional analysis.

After all, as citizens, are we not the ultimate proprietors of the Constitution and its meaning for our lives? Are not its protections of life and liberty far too precious to blindly be turned over to legal "experts," every bit as prone to prejudice and blind spots as the rest of us?

Photos:Death row's nun

Sister Helen Prejean has been on a mission to end the death penalty for three decades. The Roman Catholic nun rose to fame after the success of her book and the subsequent 1995 film adaptation, "Dead Man Walking."

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Photos:Death row's nun

A young Prejean, right, and her sister Mary Ann with their father. She grew up, she says, in a privileged home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, oblivious to the racism and poverty around her.

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In her youth, Prejean jokes, a Catholic woman had two choices: get married or become a nun. She picked the latter and joined the Congregation of St. Joseph in 1957.

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Prejean on the set with Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins during the filming of "Dead Man Walking."

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Photos:Death row's nun

Prejean visits Dobie Gillis Williams on death row at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in 1996. Williams, who had an IQ of 65 and was convicted by an all-white jury, was executed in 1999. Prejean says he was innocent.

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Photos:Death row's nun

Prejean's sister Mary Ann and brother Louie accompanied her to Notre Dame University when she won the 1996 Laetare Medal, awarded for outstanding service to the Catholic church and society.

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Prejean speaks to the media after Lori Urs, right, married Joseph O'Dell just hours before his execution in Virginia in 1997. Prejean believes O'Dell was innocent, too.

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Prejean visited Karla Faye Tucker, who was executed in 1998 for murders. Tucker said she got sexual gratification from the killings but later became a Christian. Prejean thought the clemency board ought to have considered the change in Tucker.

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Photos:Death row's nun

Prejean wrote her second book, "The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions" in Montana. In it, she challenges Justice Antonin Scalia's support for the death penalty and questions his Catholic faith.

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Photos:Death row's nun

Prejean, right, talks with James Allridge's attorney Jim Marcus after the execution of his client in 2004. Allridge had asked for clemency based on apparent rehabilitation and a quest for redemption. Prejean believes Texas should have looked at those factors because its capital statute emphasizes, as it did in Allridge's death sentence, the "future dangerousness" of the convicted.

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Photos:Death row's nun

Prejean was by Gov. Jon Corzine's side in 2007 as he signed a bill to repeal the death penalty in New Jersey, the first state to abolish executions through legislation since it was reinstated in 1976.

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Photos:Death row's nun

Prejean speaks to an audience at Clarke University in Dubuque, Iowa, in 2012. Even at 75, she's on the road many days a year speaking to audiences about why she believes the death penalty is wrong.

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Photos:Death row's nun

Prejean leaves the courthouse in Boston on May 11, 2015, after testifying in the death penalty trial of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. She said she believed Tsarnaev was "genuinely sorry" for the pain and suffering he inflicted on his victims. Three people were killed and 260 were injured in the 2013 bombings.

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I have profoundly disagreed with Scalia on two fronts: jurisprudence and religious faith.

As for his jurisprudence, I do not think that the only correct way to interpret the Constitution is to interpret its words (text) as, supposedly, our 18th century framers understood them.

Given what we now know about the fluid nature of text and context in linguistics, that's an impossible task. Even more impossible is to confine ourselves to the practice of punishment as they practiced it, which, to most modern eyes, was harsh in the extreme.

In 1999, I accompanied Dobie Gillis Williams into the killing chamber of Louisiana three times before my native state finally killed him. An African American with a very low IQ, Dobie was sentenced by an all-white jury to die for supposedly killing a white woman.

I say supposedly because even though the appeals courts upheld Dobie's guilt, I am convinced of his innocence. I tell Dobie's story in"The Death of Innocents," taking readers through our broken system of justice that masks truth and gets poor men like Dobie executed.

Three years after Dobie's death came a Supreme Court decision that, had it come earlier, might well have saved his life, a decision in which Scalia fiercely dissented. In Atkins v Virginia (2002), the court ruled 6-3 that executing people with mental disabilities -- that is with an IQ of 70 and below -- violates the Eighth Amendment's ban on "cruel and unusual punishments."

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In his dissent, Scalia used as his moral criterion an 18th century dictionary's definition of "idiot" as "such a person who cannot account or number twenty pence, nor can tell who was his father or mother, nor how old he is." According to Scalia's perception of the Constitution as not living but dead, that archaic definition should have guided the court's decision and not any modern understanding of diminished mental capacity. Dobie, who had an IQ of 65 but knew exactly who his mama was, would have failed Scalia's "idiot" test.

My second argument with Scalia was the way he interpreted Catholic teaching about the death penalty. Church opposition to government executions has developed considerably in recent years, which to Scalia was anathema. He interpreted his Catholic faith as he interpreted the Constitution, staking his position in unchangeable tradition, upheld by Saints Augustine in the 5th century and Thomas Aquinas in the 12th.

These stalwart teachers, he maintained -- unlike Catholic American bishops so easily swayed by "modern trends," as he saw it -- upheld the righteousness of government-imposed executions as God's will, justified in the same way as the killing of a rabid dog or the amputation of a gangrenous limb.

Photos:Women of death row

Kelly Renee Gissendaner was executed by lethal injection on Tuesday, September 29. She was the only woman on Georgia's death row. She was convicted in a February 1997 murder plot that targeted her husband in suburban Atlanta. Women make up fewer than 2% of the inmates sentenced to die on death row in the United States, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

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Patricia Blackmon was 29 when she killed her 2-year-old adopted daughter in Dothan, Alabama, in May 1999. Blackmon was sentenced on June 7, 2002.

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Tierra Capri Gobble was 21 when she murdered her 4-month-old son in Dothan, Alabama, on December 15, 2004. She was sentenced on October 26, 2005.

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Photos:Women of death row

Shonda Johnson was 28 when she murdered her husband in Jasper, Alabama, on November 30, 1997. She was sentenced on October 22, 1999.

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Photos:Women of death row

Christie Michelle Scott was 30 when she murdered her 6-year-old son and committed arson in Russellville, Alabama, on September 16, 2008. The jury recommended a life sentence, but the judge sentenced her to death in August 2009.

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Photos:Women of death row

Wendi Andriano was 30 when she murdered her husband in Mesa, Arizona, on October 8, 2000. She was sentenced on December 22, 2004.

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Photos:Women of death row

Shawna Forde was 41 when she murdered a 29-year-old man and a 9-year-old girl in Arivaca, Arizona, on May 30, 2009. She was sentenced on February 23, 2011.

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Photos:Women of death row

Maria del Rosio Alfaro was 18 when she committed burglary, robbery, and murdered a 9-year-old girl in Anaheim, California, on June 15, 1990. She was sentenced on July 14, 1992.

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Photos:Women of death row

Dora Luz Buenrostro was 34 when she murdered her two daughters, ages 4 and 9, and her 8-year-old son in San Jacinto, California, on October 25 and October 27, 1994. She was sentenced on October 2, 1998.

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Photos:Women of death row

Socorro Caro was 42 when she murdered her three sons, ages 5, 8, and 11, in Santa Rosa Valley, California, on November 22, 1999. She was sentenced on April 5, 2002.

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Photos:Women of death row

Celeste Simone Carrington was 30 when she murdered a 34-year-old man during a burglary on January 26, 1992, in San Carlos, California, and a 36-year-old woman during a burglary in Palo Alto, California, on March 11, 1992. She was sentenced to death on November 23, 1994.

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Photos:Women of death row

Cynthia Lynn Coffman was 24 when she murdered a 20-year-old woman in San Bernardino County, California, on November 7, 1986. She was sentenced to death on August 31, 1989.

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Photos:Women of death row

Kerry Lyn Dalton was 28 when she murdered a 23-year-old woman in Live Oak Springs, California, on June 26, 1988. She was sentenced to death on May 23, 1995.

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Photos:Women of death row

Susan Eubanks was 33 when she murdered her four sons, ages 4, 6, 7, and 14, in San Marcos, California, on October 27, 1996. She was sentenced to death on October 13, 1999.

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Photos:Women of death row

Veronica Gonzalez was 26 when she murdered her 4-year-old niece in San Diego on July 21, 1995. She was sentenced to death on July 20, 1998.

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Photos:Women of death row

Valerie Dee Martin was 35 when she murdered her boyfriend in Lancaster, California, on March 28, 2003. She was sentenced to death on March 26, 2010.

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Maureen McDermott was 37 when she murdered a 27-year-old man in Van Nuys, California, on April 28, 1985. She was sentenced to death on June 8, 1990.

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Michelle Lyn Michaud was 38 when she kidnapped, sexually assaulted and murdered a 22-year-old woman in Pleasanton, California, on December 2, 1997. She was sentenced on September 25, 2002.

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Photos:Women of death row

Tanya Jaime Nelson was 46 when she murdered two women, ages 23 and 52, in Westminster, California, on April 21, 2005. She was sentenced to death on March 26, 2010.

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Sandi Dawn Nieves was 34 when she murdered her four daughters, ages 5, 7, 11, and 12, in Saugus, California, on June 30, 1998. She was sentenced on October 6, 2000.

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Photos:Women of death row

Angelina Rodriguez was 32 when she murdered her husband in Montebello, California, on September 9, 2000. She was sentenced on January 12, 2004.

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Photos:Women of death row

Brooke Marie Rottiers was 26 when she murdered two men, ages 22 and 28, in Corona, California, on August 28, 2006. She was sentenced on October 22, 2010.

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Photos:Women of death row

Mary Ellen Samuels was 40 when she hired someone to kill her husband in Northridge, California, and then murdered her husband's killer in Ventura County, California on June 27, 1989. She was sentenced on September 16, 1994.

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Photos:Women of death row

Cathy Lynn Sarinana was 30 when she murdered her 13-year-old nephew in Riverside, California, on December 25, 2005. She was sentenced on June 26, 2009.

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Janeen Marie Snyder was 21 when she murdered a 16-year-old girl in Rubidoux, California, on April 17, 2001. She was sentenced on September 7, 2006.

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Catherine Thompson was 42 when she hired someone to kill her husband in Westwood, California, on June 14, 1990. She was sentenced on June 10, 1993.

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Manling Tsang Williams was 28 when she murdered her husband and two sons, ages 3 and 7, in Rowland Heights, California, on August 7, 2007. She was sentenced on January 18, 2012.

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Photos:Women of death row

Margaret Allen was 39 when she murdered a 39-year-old woman in Titusville, Florida, on February 8, 2005. She was sentenced on May 19, 2011.

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Photos:Women of death row

Tina Lasonya Brown was 39 when she murdered a 19-year-old woman in West Pensacola, Florida, on March 24, 2010. She was sentenced on September 28, 2012.

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Photos:Women of death row

Ana Marie Cardona was 39 when she murdered her 3-year-old son in Miami on November 2, 1990. She was sentenced in 1992, the sentence was reversed 10 years later. She was resentenced on June 10, 2011.

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Photos:Women of death row

Emilia Lily Carr was 24 when she murdered a 26-year-old woman in Boardman, Florida, on February 14, 2009. She was sentenced on February 22, 2011.

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Photos:Women of death row

Tiffany Ann Cole was 23 when she murdered a 61-year-old man and a 61-year-old woman in Jacksonville, Florida, on July 8, 2005. She was sentenced on March 6, 2008.

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Photos:Women of death row

Kelly Renee Gissendaner was 28 when she murdered her husband in Gwinnett County, Georgia, on February 7, 1997. She was sentenced on November 20, 1998.

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Photos:Women of death row

Robin Lee Row was 35 when she murdered her husband and her two children in Boise, Idaho, on February 10, 1992. She was sentenced on December 16, 1993.

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Photos:Women of death row

Paula Cooper, once a teen on Indiana's death row, was released from prison on Monday, June 17. She spent 27 years behind bars for stabbing a 78-year-old Bible teacher Ruth Pelke in the stomach and chest 33 times.

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Photos:Women of death row

Debra Denise Brown was 21 when she murdered a 7-year-old girl in Gary, Indiana, on June 18,1984. She was sentenced on June 23, 1986. She is serving a life sentence in Ohio but is sentenced to death in Indiana.

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Photos:Women of death row

Virginia Susan Caudill was 37 when she robbed and murdered a 73-year-old woman in Lexington, Kentucky, on March 15, 1998. She was sentenced on March 24, 2000.

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Photos:Women of death row

Antoinette Frank was 22 when she robbed and murdered a 25-year-old police officer, a 17-year-old man and a 24-year-old woman in New Orleans on March 4, 1994. She was sentenced on September 13, 1995.

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Photos:Women of death row

Brandy Holmes was 23 when she robbed and murdered a 70-year-old man in Blanchard, Louisiana, on January 1, 2003. She was sentenced on February 21, 2006.

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Photos:Women of death row

Michelle Byrom was 42 when she hired a killer to murder her husband in Tishomingo County, Mississippi, on June 4, 1999. She was sentenced on November 18, 2000.

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Photos:Women of death row

Lisa Jo Chamberlin (aka Chamberlain) was 31 when she murdered a 34-year-old man and a 37-year-old woman in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, in March 2004. She was sentenced on August 4, 2006.

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Photos:Women of death row

Lisa Montgomery was 36 when she murdered a 23-year-old woman in Skidmore, Missouri, on July 16, 2004. She was sentenced on April 4, 2008. She is being held in federal prison.

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Photos:Women of death row

Patricia JoAnn Jennings was 47 when she murdered her husband in Wilson County, North Carolina, on September 19, 1989. She was sentenced on November 5,1990.

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Photos:Women of death row

Blanche Kiser Moore was 56 when she murdered her boyfriend in Alamance County, North Carolina, on October 7, 1986. She was sentenced on January 18, 1991.

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Photos:Women of death row

Carlette Elizabeth Parker was 34 when she murdered an 86-year-old woman in North Raleigh, North Carolina, on May 12, 1998. She was sentenced on April 1, 1999.

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Christina S. Walters was 20 when she murdered a 19-year-old woman and a 25-year-old woman in Fayetteville, North Carolina, on August 17, 1998. She was sentenced on July 6, 2000.

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Photos:Women of death row

Donna Marie Roberts was 58 when she murdered her husband near Warren, Ohio, on December 11, 2001. She was originally sentenced on June 21, 2003. That sentence was reversed on August 2, 2006, and she was resentenced on October 29, 2007.

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Photos:Women of death row

Brenda E. Andrew was 37 when she murdered her husband in Oklahoma City on November 20, 2001. She was sentenced on September 22, 2004.

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Angela Darlene McAnulty was 41 when she murdered her 15-year-old daughter in Eugene, Oregon, on December 9, 2009. She was sentenced on February 24, 2011.

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Michelle Sue Tharp was 29 when she murdered her 7-year-old daughter in Burgettstown, Pennsylvania, on April 18, 1998. She was sentenced on November 14, 2004.

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Shonda Dee Walter was 23 when she murdered an 83-year-old man in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, on March 25, 2003. She was sentenced on April 19, 2005.

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Christa Gail Pike was 18 when she murdered a 19-year-old woman in Knoxville, Tennessee, on January 12,1995. She was sentenced on March 29,1996.

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Kimberly Cargill was 42 when she murdered a 39-year-old woman in Whitehouse, Texas, on June 18, 2010. She was sentenced on May 31, 2012.

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Linda Anita Carty was 42 when she kidnapped and murdered a 20-year-old woman and the victim's infant son in Houston on May 16, 2001. She was sentenced on February 21, 2002.

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Cathy Lynn Henderson was 37 when she murdered a 3-month-old boy she was babysitting near Austin, Texas, on January 21, 1994. She was sentenced on May 25, 1995.

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Brittany Marlowe Holberg was 23 when she murdered an 80-year-old man in Amarillo, Texas, on November 13, 1996. She was sentenced on March 27, 1998.

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Melissa Elizabeth Lucio was 38 when she murdered her 2-year-old daughter in Harlington, Texas, on February 16, 2007. She was sentenced in August 2008.

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Photos:Women of death row

Darla Lynn Routier was 26 when she murdered her 5-year-old son in Rowlett, Texas, on June 6, 1996. She was sentenced on February 4, 1997.

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Photos:Women of death row

Erica Yvonne Sheppard was 19 when she murdered a 43-year-old woman in Houston on June 30, 1993. She was sentenced on March 3, 1995.

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Thus, Scalia could not brook American bishops' increasing opposition to the death penalty, nor the opposition of Popes John Paul II and Francis -- especially Pope Francis, who must have disturbed the justice considerably in his bold appeal before Congress for global abolition of the death penalty.

-- "It seems to me that the more Christian a country is, the less likely it is to regard the death penalty as immoral. Abolition has taken its firmest hold in post-Christian Europe and has least support in the church-going United States."

-- He interpreted St. Paul's words, "The powers that be are ordained of God," to mean: "Government derives its moral authority from God. It is the minister of God with powers to revenge, to execute wrath, including wrath by the sword, which is unmistakably a reference to the death penalty. ...These passages from Romans represent the consensus of Western thought until quite recent times ... regarding the powers of the state. That consensus has been upset by the emergence of democracy."

Democracy, indeed. Do our elected leaders derive the authority to govern from the people or by direct divine infusion? That's theocracy, not democracy.

Where was Jesus in the Justice's stance of faith? Where is his moral challenge to rise above seeking "an eye for an eye," to pray for and forgive our enemies?

In Chicago, Scalia justified his interpretation of Scripture by making a distinction: individual Christians must follow Jesus' call to forgive, but not the state.

In this distorted reading, state governments as God's ministers have God's blessing to inflict wrath on evildoers and those they deem "enemy."

It seems Scalia was as adept at drawing bright lines in the practice of his faith as he was in his jurisprudence. Now the bright line of death has been drawn across his life. I pray that he finds eternal rest.

I also hope and pray that the ninth new justice will be a person, who not only has an excellent legal mind, but also a compassionate and fair-minded spirit, in close touch with the struggles and aspirations of ordinary people -- especially the most vulnerable among us for whom "equal justice under law" is a cruel chimera if not an outright lie.